Winner: Neologify Your Consumerisms

By Ben PopkenApril 17, 2006

Last week we held a contest, in parallel with Valleywag, for the best consumer neologism. Here are the results.

Our grand winner is Mike Focosi with Oprahsuaded: To persuade someone, most likely a woman, into believing, buying, eating, reading or doing something that Oprah says is good. “You bought the latest Oprah’s Book Club book? You are so oprahsuaded.”

There’s something big-time wrong with your graphing software. “Blogundig” got three times as many votes as did “Costration Anxiety”, but the bar is the same size… And Oprahsuaded is a great word. I’ll use it often. Along with “fauxPod”, for a non-Apple MP3 player…

(Put tongue firmly into cheek)
First of all, I’d like to thank all my friends, acquaintances and strangers for voting for my word, Oprahsuaded, in this contest. Without you, I would not have won such a prestigious award.

To follow in the footsteps of a company like Halliburton sounds like a very inspiring honor at first. Yet, the luster soon wears off, and immediately the allure is squelched by a deep sickness in the bottom of your gut, followed by the urge to crawl into a corner and assume the fetal position and weep. Weep uncontrollably.

I would also like to thank Consumerist.com for being such a cool blog and running an important contest to help destroy the English language.

…And to my wife, Amy, all I have to say is “I AM A PRESTIGIOUS SCIENCE AWARD CERTIFICATE WINNER… YOU CAN’T TALK TO ME THAT WAY ANYMORE!”

And to my 18 month old son, Alex, “The bar has been raised. I hope this is not too much pressure to top your old man.”